Andreatta: Erie Canal tree plan has a public relations problem

About 145 acres along the Erie Canal will be clear cut from Medina to Fairport.
David Andreatta/Max Schulte/Tina MacIntyre-Yee

The Canal Corp. plans to remove trees and other vegetation at 56 locations spanning 145 acres along the Erie Canal between Medina, Orleans County, and Pittsford. The vegetation will be replaced with grass. Canal Corp. engineers describe the $2 million project as preventative work that will maintain the structural integrity of the embankments in certain areas. This portion of trees from Ayrault Road along Garden Drive in in Perinton is slated to be removed. The tree line along the left side of the canal is slated to be removed.(Photo: Max Schulte and Tina MacIntyre-Yee/staff photographers)

“A good, old-fashioned sledding hill” is what the Canal Corp.’s acting executive deputy director told me the embankments would look like once the work was complete.

All of the work will take place on state land, but public outcry has been building over the last month as the clear-cutting, which began just west of Medina in mid-October, has inched eastward toward its final destination in Fairport.

On Sunday, town supervisors from Perinton and Pittsford plan to rally in protest with a group of concerned residents at noon on the canal in Fairport. The Brighton supervisor has also expressed worry.

The group, whose Facebook page, “Stop the Canal Clear Cut,” has over 300 members, questions whether the project is necessary and how it will affect the structural integrity of the canal — the latter being the very thing the state claims the work is intended to preserve.

The state insists clear-cutting will restore embankments to their original design specs of about 100 years ago, which was free of vegetation. Tree roots, the state insists, can weaken embankments to the point of failure.

Opponents, though, believe that the state is overstating the threat. Indeed, state officials have said the project is preventative and that no specific embankments are in danger.

That has opponents suspecting clear-cutting is just a cheap way for the state to play catch-up on decades of neglect. They argue the state could surgically remove problem trees and retain much of the forested condition to which residents and wildlife are accustomed.

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“Throughout, the vegetation management program has been a model of transparency,” read a statement from the New York Power Authority, which took control of the cash-strapped Canal Corp. from the New York State Thruway Authority this year.

It noted that Canal Corp. personnel have met with elected officials and canal homeowners whose property abuts state land. It added that the agencies held three public meetings and the Canal Corp. website has a detailed page devoted to the project.

All of that is true. I’ll attest, too, that the agencies have been responsive to me, which can’t be said of all state offices.

But most of the state’s public outreach — the connecting with elected officers, the meetings, the website — came about only after I reported in late October that the project was underway, and readers said, “The state’s doing what to our canal?”

(I wasn’t the first reporter to relay the project. News outlets in Buffalo and Batavia beat me to it. But I was the first to describe how the project will dramatically alter the landscape of portions of the canal.)

None of the town supervisors or village mayors east of Brockport had any idea what was coming. No canal homeowner I spoke with had heard of the project before I knocked on their door to tell them the state was cutting down the trees in their de facto backyard.

In Brockport, where a public meeting was held before my report, the mayor, responding to furious residents who read my report, subsequently asked the Canal Corp. for a second meeting because the first wasn’t well-publicized and was poorly attended.

Prior to my report, the Canal Corp. canceled a public meeting it had planned to hold in Pittsford in late October. After my report, the agency scheduled a meeting for Nov. 20 in Brighton in response to so many questions from residents.

The meeting, according to some attendees, did not go over well.

“(The Canal Corp.) had a number of people at the meeting,” said Brighton Supervisor Bill Moehle. “But they were not engaging with the community to do anything more than to tell everybody, ‘This is what we’re doing.’

“This was not to say, ‘Hey, we’re interested in your feedback. Does this make sense? Do you have any questions?’” Moehle continued. “It was very much in the nature of, ‘Here’s what we’re going to do and here’s the schedule.’”

The contracts have been signed. The work is underway. A protest rally isn’t going to derail the project.

But no one can blame residents for feeling railroaded, either, which is kind of ironic considering it was the railroad that killed the canal as an economic engine.